GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge in Maryland Friday ordered the Trump administration to take immediate steps to return a Maryland man who was deported to a Salvadoran mega-prison by mistake, setting up another high-stakes clash between the White House and the courts.
"This was an illegal act," U.S. Federal District Judge Paula Xinis told Justice Department lawyers at a federal court hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland about the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who lived in the U.S. legally and had a work permit. Abrego Garcia was arrested and deported last month — despite having been granted protection by an immigration judge in 2019 that should have prevented him from being deported to El Salvador.
Judge Xinis ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, April 7. She said keeping him in El Salvador constitutes irreparable harm.
"From the moment he was seized, it was unconstitutional," Judge Xinis said during the hearing. "If there isn't a document, a warrant, a statement of probable cause, then there is no basis to have seized him in the first place. That's how I'm looking at it," the judge said.
The Trump administration on Friday indicated it will appeal the ruling to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Justice Department admits that Abrego Garcia was deported because of an administrative error. But DOJ lawyers argued in court papers that he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13 and that the judge lacks the authority to order his return since Abrego Garcia is no longer in the U.S.
Abrego Garcia's lawyers told the court that's nonsense and said the Department of Homeland Security should bring Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador immediately.
"They're coming before this court and saying we've tried nothing, and we're all out of options," said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia's lawyers.
Erez Reuveni, a lawyer for the Justice Department, took a different approach, asking the judge for more time to discuss the matter with his clients in the Trump administration.
"I would ask the court to give us the defendants one more chance to do this" without an order from the court, Reuveni asked at the end of the hearing. Judge Xinis rejected that request.
She asked Reuveni to explain why Abrego Garcia was arrested last month. But Reuveni said he didn't know.
Abrego Garcia had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, all U.S. citizens, when he was arrested by ICE officers last month.
"In a blink of an eye, our three children lost their father, and I lost the love of my life, his mother lost his son, his siblings lost their brother," said Jennifer Vasquez, Abrego Garcia's wife, at a press conference earlier Friday in Maryland.
"Our entire family is broken" by ICE's "error," she said, and described Abrego García as a dedicated father and great husband who "pushes everyone around to find their happiness, even in tough times." The White House has cast Abrego García as a member of MS-13, and a threat to the public.
"You would think this individual was Father of the Year, living in Maryland, living a peaceful life, when that couldn't be further from the truth," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier this week.
But Abrego Garcia's attorneys say the government has offered no evidence that he was ever a member of MS-13. They say that allegation is based on a confidential informant's claim in 2019 that Abrego Garcia was a member of the gang in New York, a state where he has never lived, and on the fact that he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie. His lawyers say Abrego Garcia has no criminal record in the U.S. or any other country.
During Friday's hearing, Judge Xinis sounded skeptical about the Justice Department's allegations against Abrego Garcia.
"That's just chatter in my view. I haven't been given any evidence," Xinis said. "In a court of law when someone is accused of membership in such a violent and predatory organization, it comes in the form of an indictment, a complaint, a criminal proceeding that then has robust process, so we can assess facts."
Police in Prince George's County, Maryland arrested Abrego Garcia in 2019 in the parking lot of a Home Depot where he was seeking work as a day laborer, according to his lawyers. But they never again questioned him regarding MS-13, or accused him of membership in MS-13 after that initial arrest.
An immigration judge later granted Abrego Garcia what's known as a withholding of removal, finding that he was more likely than not to be harmed if he was returned to El Salvador. Lawyers for the Justice Department and Abrego Garcia agree that status should have prevented his deportation to El Salvador last month.
Abrego Garcia was removed from the country on March 15th along with hundreds of other alleged gang members, who remain incarcerated at a supermax prison in El Salvador.
The Trump administration contends that all of the men have ties to MS-13 or Tren de Aragua, two gangs that the U.S. has designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. But many of the men do not have criminal records, and immigrant advocates say the men did not have a chance to contest the allegations against them before they were deported.
Lawyers and family members for a growing number of those men say they are not gang members, and believe that they were targeted for arrest and removal largely because of their tattoos.
At the rally in Maryland earlier on Friday, Vasquez said she stands with other mothers and wives whose sons have been deported by the Trump administration.
"The only thing we have at the end of the day is our faith and our strength to fight back," Vasquez said. "We must fight for our husbands, our children, our neighbors, our loved ones — fight for Kilmar and fight for all the immigrant families lighting a candle for the loved ones that disappeared."
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